BowTIE

Brass Transposition Instruction Environment

BowTIE is a free Windows
application designed to help trumpet and horn players learn to transpose.
Euphonium and tuba players may also find BowTIE useful for learning fingerings
on instruments in various keys. (Because the lower brass instruments are nontransposing,
the players are always reading concert pitches. However, hardware changes
present issues similar to those which confront players of the higher brass
instruments.)

Conventional wisdom indicates that much of learning how to
transpose may be achieved away from the instrument. As Scott Whitener put it in
his Complete Guide to Brass,

Although some daily instrumental work is necessary
to orient the ear to different pitch levels, eye and finger coordination may be
developed by reading silently and pretending to operate the valves. In this
way, non-practice hours can be used to further transposition skills.

The theory behind BowTIE is that these “non-practice” hours
can be made more productive by providing immediate feedback to the player. When
practicing the “silent reading” approach, I often felt as though I were getting
the wrong notes under my fingers. Moreover, I found this kind of
practice extremely boring. I hope that BowTIE will help players (including me)
progress more rapidly and enjoyably toward facility in transposition, that
BowTIE users will find it easier to get work wearing a bow tie in the
rough-and-tumble world of orchestral brass.

The tool could also be used to learn basic fingerings on the
instruments or perhaps to practice difficult fingering passages. Another
application for BowTIE would be for “silent practice”—for times when playing on
the real horn would be disturbing to others.

For details about recent releases and implementation notes,
see the change log. For more information about
BowTIE, check out the project
page at SourceForge.

System Requirements

BowTIE should run on any flavor of Windows since Windows 95
(95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP), but I have only fully tested it on Windows 2000.
(Other users have reported success with 98, NT, and XP.) A display that
supports a resolution of 1024x768 pixels is required.

The full BowTIE distribution includes GNU Ghostscript to enable
viewing music notation on screen. While Ghostscript will work for this purpose,
it is not an ideal solution by itself. We recommend installing the latest
release of Adobe
Acrobat Reader before installing BowTIE. (You have probably already done
this for other reasons.) If you preinstall Acrobat Reader in its default
location, BowTIE will use it to display music notation. Another option is to
preinstall GSview.

License

BowTIE is freeware and is distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License. If you use
the program, please email
me. I would like to know what you think of it. Program maintenance will
definitely improve if I know BowTIE has found an audience.

Instructions

I hope this is pretty self-explanatory. Select the
instrument in your hand and on the stand. (Click New to define a new
instrument. Click Edit to modify an existing one.) Click Play to
preview the piece and adjust the performance tempo and volume. Click Perform
and wait for the performance window to open. Press the <TAB> key, and you
will hear one measure of metronome clicks. Come in on the downbeat pressing the
appropriate keyboard keys as required by the transposition of the tune. (By
default, these are the number keys— use the <1> key for first valve,
<2> for second, etc.) Press the <ESC> key to terminate a
performance early.

If you have any problems, see the troubleshooting guide. (The most common
problem appears to be with “sticking valves.” If BowTIE does not allow you to
play even the most basic tune, please try remapping the valves as described in
the troubleshooting guide.)

(Note that you can develop your own music for use with
BowTIE. I recommend Wil Macaulay’s Skink for this
purpose. It provides nice feedback when entering the abc code.)

Limitations

BowTIE is currently in alpha release. So far, only trumpet
support has been thoroughly tested. Horn support has been attempted, but not
tested very well. Euphonium and tuba support, while present, is even less
developed. Also, only a small, untested set of content files is provided. I am
hoping to find some public-domain transposition methods to translate to abc
format for use within BowTIE. Let
me know if you have some music you would like to give away.

Finally, the program will only run on Windows.

If you would like to see additional features in BowTIE,
please make
a request.

Uninstalling

You can uninstall BowTIE by selecting Start =>
Programs => Uninstall BowTIE. Note that Ghostscript will not be
removed through this action. To remove Ghostscript, you must do so separately
through Start => Settings => Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs.

Promises, Promises

The following items are on my list of features to add to
future releases of BowTIE:

Improved horn support

Euphonium support

Tuba support

Support for importing standard MIDI
files

Visual feedback during performance

Improved content (in separately downloadable
packages)

Transposition “flash cards”

A more robust (context-sensitive) help system,
including transposition techniques